If So, Exploration
by Chocomint3
Summary: People so young shouldn't have to deal with pain this deep. "Things are no longer black and white, but millions of hues and shades of different colors and the lack thereof." Introspective. Character-centric. Exploration of the world and histories of the characters as well as their futures. Warnings: probably anachronistic, possible many-character focus.
1. Rin and Len: Latent Knowledge

**Title:** Latent Knowledge

**Summary:** People so young shouldn't have to deal with pain this deep. "Things are no longer black and white, but millions of hues and shades of different colors and the lack thereof." Introspective. Character concepts pertaining to a future story.

**Genre:** Angst/Family

**Rating:** T

**Notes:** The following one-shot is actually a compilation of the character concepts I had for Rin and Len for a possibly outdated version of a story I'm planning to write. Though this is labeled complete, I might continue. There's a lot of characters and a whole world to explore, after all. :) A minor note: If I do continue, the title of this story will be subject to change. Thank you very much for reading! Please do drop a review with your thoughts. Critique is welcome, but please keep it as balanced (negatives versus positives) as possible. If it's not too much trouble, I'd like for the critique to focus less on grammar and spelling and more on the higher technicalities as well as offer suggestions more than it explains why some things I did were wrong/not optimal/awkward.

**Update (7.19.13):** I'll be continuing this! Title is now If So, Exploration. This is an exploration more than an actual story, but perhaps the actual story will reveal itself as we go along. (Basically I'm pantsing this and I have practically nothing planned and nothing to run on except former ideas and plotlines.) Therefore, please do be more lenient with any inconsistencies in my writing that you may find! Thank you very much!

* * *

**Latent Knowledge**

"No matter how fast you run, your problems will catch up, so turn and face them while you still have a chance."

* * *

Rin knows many things about her younger brother.

She knows that during the winter, no matter the weather, Len will always wear his overly large wool coat, the one with years of memories sewn onto its surface. It's the one their mother toiled over during her waning years and poured her love into, the one their father passed to his son and declared to be part of the Kagamine family legacy. It's the one with frayed hems (from years of dancing with nervous fingers); chipped, misshapen buttons (from when their mother whittled away a bit too much); a missing third button (which took its leave sometime when their father was too engaged with his theories and ideas and experiments); and patches of coarse, discolored threads (from when Len dipped it into many a supper, staring at something Rin could not, and still cannot, see).

Rin is the only one to have yet to leave her mark on it. It's a small thing, but it means a lot when she thinks about it, because it leads her to more significant problems, and she doesn't want to face any of those any time soon. It's a cowardly thing to do, putting confrontation off. It's probably very stupid of her as well, but Rin knows she isn't much of a leader.

With this information in mind, she sits back with superficial ease, as if that label serves as justification for her actions. Avoiding the problems is almost too easy, because Len is most always gone before she wakes, and she's taken to staying out of the house and occupying herself with errands of one kind or another for as long as possible.

She knows that Len's favorite fruit is the banana—not the browning yellow kind that is saccharine and soft but the crisp, yellowing green, just ripening kind that is the best of both worlds—and that he absolutely adores her banana cookies, especially when they're fresh out of the oven and paired with a cup of bittersweet hot cocoa.

She's grown rather fond of them herself—part of it might have to do with the precious memories of her mother—but she hasn't made a batch of them since last year, when, for the first time, she spent the opening of the year's end festival alone, hands curled around a cooling cup of cocoa as she waited, in vain, for the last of her family to return before festivities of the day ended.

Len had apologized the next morning and explained the circumstances in, it seemed, the wordiest and most cluttered manner possible. He stalled until breakfast was on the table, and then fidgeted and twitched his way through his apology, looking for all the world like a properly bashful and regretful brother. But he played the role too well, and the implications of this were enough to plant another seed of darkness in her heart. That, Rin suspects, was when she finally realized, somewhere in the deepest dips of her mind, that their relationship might have begun to splinter beyond repair. But still she ran: she spent her thirteenth birthday, the third day of the year's end festivals, outside with her friends and far, far away from Len, desperately trying to erase everything that had gone wrong from her mind. As if by erasing it, by ignoring it, by forgetting it, it would disappear and everything would be 'right' again.

Rin knows that her brother's actions and thoughts and feelings contradict each other often, and that he has always been more of a follower than a leader, even though he is the one supporting their lifestyle. This knowledge is her bedtime story, her counting-sheep mantra, and she clings to it with near superhuman strength, because she is afraid that if she releases it, her light will vanish and she will be left bobbing in the pounding black waters, oblivious to all but the pulsating beat of her heart.

She knows that he was, and probably still is, the favored one, because he is the one their father chose to continue his research and he is the one with magic at his fingertips. Being barred from learning magic for undisclosed reasons has always been a sore point for Rin. Even though she is to turn fourteen in a very short while and therefore should no longer give in to plights of unjustified hysterical negativity, during her lowest moments, she still curls in on herself and indulges the seeds of resentment and hate and disgust.

Rin knows that sometime when she wasn't paying attention, Len slowly pulled his hand from her grasp and started down a different path, a path blocked from her view by the scratched glass wall of lies and secrets that rose, shard by shard, between her and her beloved younger brother. The path she follows now is a steep, never-ending slope, but Rin has found a way to cope with the stinging wind that batters her as she runs. It is easy to pretend and distract and forget, and sometimes she can convince herself that nothing is wrong and that everything will be fine. Sometimes, she can even believe that what she is doing is right.

After all, it's better to live with fake optimism, because if she pretends enough, if she believes enough, the world of beliefs and pretenses she built will eventually become reality. It's amazing (too amazing, she thinks) that lies could so easily turn into truths. The more skeptical side of her whispers that there is a catch, and a terrible, terrible one. She more often than not ignores it, following with faith a sentence that had been engraved in her mind as a simple village girl: "Mother is always right, unless Father says otherwise."

She knows that the Len of her childhood—the Len she knew sometimes better than herself; the Len who was always, _always_, by her side; the Len she laughed with and cried with and fought with and above all loved with all her heart—slipped away when she wasn't watching... but she has not made a move, has not reached out, since the day he first began pushing her away.

All of her thoughts and wishes and dreams and love remain locked up inside their jars, waiting for the chance to burst to life. They will stay there until she gathers enough courage to take the lead.

* * *

Len is not like his mother; he is not an 'expressor.' He is not one to move and dance and ride high on happiness and joy; he cannot weave his feelings into words, into waves, so easily.

This is not to say that he is laconic, it is just that he has trouble finding the words that properly fit his emotions and feelings, which, to him, have always seemed to have lives of their own. They are elusive butterflies, and no matter how hard he tries to capture them, no matter how intricate his traps are, he has not yet managed to trap them unhurt. The feelings he has stored in ever so carefully in jars are crippled and mere vestiges of what they once were.

To him, summarizing emotions into just a few words is insulting. (But still necessary.) Unfortunately, he isn't skilled with words enough to speak pages and pages of prose on the intricacies of his emotions, and nor does he have the time to do so. Instead, and much less gracefully, he paints his emotions with the brush of silence onto the canvas of time, a silent language spoken fluently by only two people in the world.

It's more accurate to say that he _used to_ do that, because now, he's forgotten. Or maybe, it's Rin who has forgotten. He is no longer sure of what she thinks, and he can tell that it is the same for her with him. The silent speech they practiced in their childhood has faded into the unnoticed corners of their minds, shattered with disuse and distrust.

There is a most peculiar feeling that stirs inside him when he thinks of the idiocy of his situation—a mix of hysteria and helplessness and relief and anger and nostalgia and he doesn't know what else that roars, crashing over his heart, and chars him to the core of his being. During those times, he lies in bed just a little longer, hugging his sister to him and appreciating how her body fits perfectly in the curve of his own and how her steady breathing and the heat radiating from her so easily grounds him.

It's times like those when he marvels at the sheer oddity of their relationship. The level of dysfunctionality their small family has is amazingly high—high enough, in fact, that when their father was still with them and the twins still indulged in tales of heroes and living legends, Len believed that this was indicative of his destiny to become great and be written into history as a hero, a legend.

He still believes this to be true, but of course he knows better now. There are more factors involved (too many, he thinks) and things are no longer black and white, but millions of hues and shades of different colors and the lack thereof.

When he stops to think about it, he isn't so sure that he'd want to be exemplary, because he doesn't want to struggle any more than he has to. He's perfectly fine with being just another person, an average 'nobody', if it means he can live a peaceful and content life.

This is where he is fundamentally different from his father, and he is glad for it, because he isn't sure he'd like to be like his father, whose entire existence and reason for life seemed to focus on his ideas for greatness and whether they succeeded or not. This is not to say that he wasn't a good father or that he didn't love his wife and children. It just looked as if his priorities were not family first and legend next, but the other way around, something that Len feels irritated and resentful about to this day.

It's too late for him (and by extension, for Rin) to have 'the life of a normal person.' The choice to live as a normal nobody was forfeit years ago—his father chose the path of the great and the misunderstood, and Len followed. Rin did not, because she was deprived of the knowledge necessary to do so, but Len doesn't think for a minute that she isn't suffering like he is. He isn't so supercilious to think that he is unique and thus the only person in the world with such a burden.

The way he is now, no matter how many relationships splinter, no matter how many things he loses or sacrifices, the only way for him to move is forward. He has no choice, not anymore, not even after his father left him to his own devices, because Len himself has not the courage to lunge for what he wants. He doesn't even have to courage to lunge for what he _needs_. [He is far from a hero, but if their family (or what's left of it) needs one—and it does—then he will be one.]

He wonders if he'll have the bravery to stop when the time comes for him to sacrifice his sister. As he is now, he thinks that he won't, because time is already ripping the entity that is Rin-and-Len apart, and he has done nothing to stop it.

[Before that time comes, he must change, and change he will. That is, after all, what 'heroes' do best.]


	2. Intermission: House of Lies

**Title: **Silence

**Summary:** They've lost their safe haven. Not for forever, surely, but they've forgotten the pathway, and that makes their journey a great deal harder.

**Rating: **K

**Genre:** Angst

**Notes: **...This was written around the time I wrote the previous chapter, lol. I was trying out a different style with this one, I think. It's another one of those "Hmmm, dunno what I'm doing so lemme just bang something out, haha." And then I edited it a bit (got lazy though lol) and stuff, and I figured I could post it here for feedback (and so that I could feel like I wrote more for this than I actually have, haha. I have around 500, 700 words for the next character writing thing? So this is kind of a random filler thing.)

ALSO I'M ON A HIATUS THING BECAUSE OF COLLEGE APPS. But not really, because priorities all wrong, man.

Anyway, please enjoy! ^_^;;

* * *

**House** of** Lies**

* * *

"Lying is done with words and also with silence." —Adrienne Rich

* * *

Rin wakes to cold air and the pleasing aroma of oils and spices. The other side of the bed is cold, but someone has tucked the covers snugly around her body, preserving a comfortable warmth. Cold light pours in from the window—someone has drawn back the curtains. Moaning in annoyance, she turns away from the shining frosted window and burrows into the quilt, breathing deeply as she tries to slip back to sleep.

_Breakfast... mmh... Len?! _She bolts upright and the quilt flies off her, taking the heat with it. The freezing air assaults her, sinking through her thin cotton sleepwear, but she pays it no mind. She clambers out of bed and lands with a soft thump on the ice-cold floor, which gifts her a sharp shock that shoots through her thinning socks and up her legs.

Jogging in place, she snatches up her shoes and dashes into the hallway. She nearly crashes into the opposite wall in her haste and pauses, as much to catch her breath as to collect her thoughts.

A thought hits her, and the eagerness and urgency that she had felt just moments before evaporate.

What would they speak about? The way things are now—

Her heart is pounding uncomfortably loudly and pulsates in the palms of her hands, and she can barely feel the cold. She leans against the wall to steady herself, breathing in slowly as she tries to complete her thought. She becomes uncomfortably aware of the grit in her eyes as it rubs painfully against the surfaces of her eyes with every blink.

The way things are now—what? Things are different now. No longer how they used to be.

Her hand falls lax and her shoes hit the ground with two overlapping, dull thwacks.

That kind of circular logic, spinning in circles... none of that matters. (Even though it is voiceless, she can tell it's an empty reassurance.) What matters is making a decision—really, _action is all that matters_—and she decides... she decides that she does not want to see him.

The cold air brushing against her is becoming uncomfortable. (It's harassing her—the air, the thoughts piling up in her head...)

Why doesn't she want to see him? (The voice in the cage is persistent today.) It's obvious, she says to herself with false bravado. She wants to save the both of them from the awkwardness that will ensue. The trapped voice is not satisfied with her superficial answer, and whispers the truth—that it's because Rin is a coward, no better than her lying brother, no better than her evasive father.

But Rin does not listen and stoops down to pick up her shoes. Her hand is pale and trembling,

The reason... it doesn't matter. Things... things are fine. She's happy, really. She's fine. It's these thoughts... these worries...

_Don't think about it, and everything will be alright._ She mumbles it to herself, repeating it like a mantra and forcing strength and brittle conviction into her voice.

When Len leaves for his work, she will meet with SeeU just like on any other day, and they will arrange flowers and eat delicious festival foods and enjoy themselves. And she will be happy.

_She will be happy again._

The small voice locked in its jail cell whispers still. Rin ignores it.

She is returning to the bedroom when her brother's unmistakable voice calls out to her. "Good morning, Rin."

The pleasant and relaxed overtones do not calm her tense muscles. She forces herself to turn toward him and offers a shaky smile. The turmoil inside her does not allow for much more. She hopes it looks convincing. Judging by Len's frown, she does not think so. "Good morning, Len. You're home."

There is a pause. Len is staring intently her left ear when he responds, and there is a strained smile adorning his face. "Of course I'm home. Today is the first day of the year's end festival."

This time, he doesn't quite pull off the light tone he is clearly aiming for: there is a slight tremor in his voice, and his words come off as a little flat.

Rin's smile slides completely off her face. Her gut clenches, and when she speaks, her voice is as cold as the air around them. "Of course." She knows that—no, she _thinks_ that, because she doesn't really _know_ about him anymore—she thinks that he is attempting to make up for last year's blunder, but when he says that... it annoys her.

No, she thinks, she does not want to see him. Not if he will blatantly throw lies to her face like that.

Len partially lifts an arm as if to reach out to her. He stares at her shivering figure, a queer expression passing across his face, and opens his mouth, taking a breath. For a moment, Rin thinks that he'll explain everything that has torn them apart, or that he'll apologize, or that he'll say—something, anything, that will alleviate the pain that has been growing inside of her. But he exhales loudly and turns away. The only words that leave his lips are, "Breakfast is ready. I'll wait for you."

_I'll wait for you_. The words should not hurt her—but they do, because Rin sees a deeper meaning in them. He did not wait for her—he sped ahead down a path she was forbidden to follow and blocked the path with a wall of secrets and lies and silences.

_"I'll always be by your side. Promise!"_ As five-year-old Len's voice rings in her mind, Rin shivers as sparks run through her body and re-enters their bedroom. Physically, he is still here, but mentally, she is sure that he left long ago.

She shuts the door behind her and stares at the window across the small, minimally furnished room. The white light passing through the warped glass is intensified by the cloudy yet clear film of frost. It blinds her eyes.

She moves over to the window, squinting. The street is already splashed with the noises and colors of people rushing about. The throng is thin, but Rin knows that when she leaves the house later, this will no longer be the case. Two young children catch her eye as they run past, faces like pink lilies from the cold. Placing her hands carefully on the fraying yellow curtains, Rin murmurs, "I guess... it's no use yearning for what's long lost, right?" A quiet, fluttering breath. "If so—even so..."

With a smooth jerk of her right hand, the side of their room with the bed is dimmed. Another sigh. "What are the lies? What are the truths? Can't you at least tell me that?"

And with another pull, Rin covers the room with shadows. There is still a thin band of light pouring in from the gap in the middle of the window that the curtains refuse to cover, but Rin pays it no mind as she begins to dress for the day.

Briefly, she wonders what they will talk about. Then, she shrugs it away and thinks, almost desperately, of other things.

* * *

**Request:** It would be absolutely lovely if you could share some thoughts about... everything, haha. If there's any part that you believe is lacking, please do point it out and suggest a way to improve it! The way I wrote it... it's confusing (OTL) because Rin herself is confused and has no idea what the heck she's doing... (Read: I have no idea and it came out like that and I tried to fix it and make it more clear but couldn't come up with anything to make it clearer |||OTL)

Is it melodramatic? If so, which parts? [I don't think I led into the emotional turmoil as well as I could have, so apologies if the angst seemed too heavy.]

...And now, to stop procrastinating.

Thank you very much for reading! I hope you'll stick around! :) Please share your thoughts!


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